Charivari snippets
by Arixa23
Summary: You think all the Kooza charivari are interchangeable? Think again, 'cause I'm here to prove you wrong.
1. Charivari 1

Charivari 1

The leader of their troupe, Trickster's first creation after the musicians, never used his status for bragging rights. From the outside, he looked like a simple dancer and pusher, forming the base in their human pyramids, and no one in the audience would have picked him out of the crowd. But he was the one all the younger charivari went to for coaching, and he oversaw much more of the action than was apparent. Even the aloof trapeze artist and the crazy clowns always gave him a nod of respect. 

A/N: Let's get this straight, first of all: I call them 'charivari,' but since I'm referring to the house troupe which performs teeterboard as well, I'm going to include some teeterboard terminology in these as well. So let me give you some definitions to avoid confusion. According to Wikipedia, a teeterboard troupe consists of flyers, pushers, catchers, and spotters.

Flyer: One who flies. The people who actually get shot up in the air.

Pusher: One who pushes. Those who launch the flyers into the air by jumping on the other end of the teeterboard.

Catcher: One who catches. The people holding the big mattresses, I believe.

Spotter: ...I don't actually know, what would your guess be? XD (Honestly, I'm not sure how these differ from catchers. I'm sure there is a difference, though.)


	2. Charivari 2

Charivari 2

Where Charivari 1 was modest about his priority ranking, Charivari 2 was most definitely not. He was a young and handsome flyer and he knew it, and he enjoyed reminding all the girls that he had been there before any of them (at which point Charivari 8 would usually hit him over the head with a teeterboard stilt, and Charivari 5 would remind her that head injuries were not a good thing, especially when one was supposed to be cooperating with one's performance-mates). But they were all used to him by now, their resident show-off, and treated him as a given. If the contortionists all wanted to swoon over him, then, well, that was their choice.


	3. Charivari 3

Charivari 3

The first woman in the troupe, mature, confident, not flashy because she knew she was more than good enough without trying to show off, Charivari 3 always grabbed the audience's eyes as she waved from atop a pole or a ball balanced on the head of her partner, Charivari 4. The younger charivari tried to equal her effortless grace, and discovered that it took them quite a bit more effort than they'd expected.


	4. Charivari 4

Charivari 4

Quiet and introspective offstage, efficient and always smiling onstage, Charivari 4 shadowed his partner 3, letting her take the lead in their ventures, though he was always the one to support her, spotting for her and the rest of them in the teeterboard act. He was easy to be with, even if he did tend to blend into the background a bit.


	5. Charivari 5

Charivari 5

You could have been excused for calling Charivari 5 a know-it-all. He certainly looked it, tall and snarky and Asian, the best dancer in the troupe and the highest flyer on stilts. In truth, though, he... really was a know-it-all. But a likeable know-it-all, who paid a lot of attention to their group as a whole and had a close connection to Charivari 9, 10 and 11 in particular. He spent quite a _lot_ of time with Charivari 11, to tell the truth, but if you said anything about him being gay, he would borrow Charivari 8's stilt and hit you over the head with it as being an idiot in need of emergency brain surgery, all ideas about probable harmfulness to team cooperation set aside.


	6. Charivari 6 and 7

Charivari 6 and 7

The twins Charivari 6 and 7, pushers and dancers, never left each other's sides. They worked in perfect harmony to propel flyers high into the air during the teeterboard acts, and turned flips and somersaults off the trampoline holes while everyone else was doing various things with balls and poles, but never strayed far from one another.

"Don't you get tired of hanging out together every single second of the day?" Charivari 13 demanded of them. Charivari 6 glanced over at his brother and smiled. "Well... sometimes," he admitted.


	7. Charivari 8

Charivari 8

She knew that she was special, as a fact. For one thing, she knew more about the Trickster than anyone else in Kooza, possibly excluding the trapeze artist, and while nobody was sure what exactly their relationship was, it was obvious that there was one. They would glance at each other while she danced, and he would smile that smirking smile of his, and she would smile back at him.

"Figures," was the muttered comment passed around, probably initiated by Charivari 13. "She's bossy enough to control even him." But what Charivari 8 had was not exactly bossiness. She was the smallest member of the troupe, not grabbing as much attention as Charivari 3 or 9, but she could do things on a unistilt that impressed even the other stilt flyers, and she had an immeasurable amount of self-confidence, as if she knew that, no matter what Charivari 1 or 2 or 5 might think, all the charivari was really hers. 

A/N: When I saw Kooza in Miami, as far as I could make out, this is who Trickster was paired with. I kid you not. It wasn't as obvious as he used to be with the trapeze artist, but they kept giving each other glances... Anyway, 8's my favorite.


	8. Charivari 9

Charivari 9

9. 9, the number stamped on her upper arm, fitting her perfectly - a graceful and precise curve, just like her. She was not afraid of showing off her stuff, of appearing more sophisticated and graceful than the rest of the clockwork crew, and she simply could not understand what the Trickster saw in little Charivari 8 that was absent in her. Charivari 13 didn't hide his infatuation with her, dropping his cynical persona when she was around, but she was uninterested in him. Perhaps, she thought, if she practiced harder and climbed higher and flipped longer, the Trickster would turn his attention on her. In the meantime, Charivari 2 was a decent consolation prize.


	9. Charivari 10

Charivari 10

Charivari 10 was... different. His round face and distinctive features stood out in the crowd, instantly recognizable to anyone, even those who pretended that the charivari all looked the same. He seemed like some kind of experiment the Trickster had played with, perhaps considering him for an act of his own before relegating him to the chorus. He spoke the chair balancer's language, an odd, flowing tongue which none of the rest of them understood, and the two of them would have hour-long conversations while the rest of the charivari stood by puzzledly. Charivari 12 watched him from the shadows, fascinated.

A/N: All the other charivari don't really correspond to specific real performers, though I did assign them performers just so I had a face to go with the number, but I wrote Charivari 10 with Ganjuur Boldbaatar specifically in mind. He's just got such a distinctive face, I wanted to acknowledge him...


	10. Charivari 11

Charivari 11

Funny little Charivari 11, not yet quite used to his semi-freedom from mechanical toy soldier-hood, had to be coached by the rest of them in how to behave in the realm. He only really came into his own when you gave him a balancing ball or a teeterboard, and then he was every inch one of them. Especially on the balls, he was always the one running around the stage like he was riding a bike, waving his arms and grinning like a little kid and trying, under Charivari 5's watchful gaze, to keep with the choreography while having the fun he was really more interested in.


	11. Charivari 12

Charivari 12

She was the only one of the four women who was not constantly showing off to the audience or the boys, instead just doing her thing for the enjoyment of doing it, performing as part of the house troupe and not trying to steal the audience's eyes. She simply loved performing. She was the one the rest of them went to for advice and comfort, and if she were to ever show off for any reason, it would be only to try to get Charivari 10 to look at her...


	12. Charivari 13

Charivari 13

While the rest of the charivari teased him about his unlucky number, Charivari 13 wore it like a badge. There was probably some kind of inside joke there on the Trickster's part, because there was no denying that 13 was much too cynical and wannabe-rebellious for his status among the rest of them. But it wasn't that he was unlucky while performing - in fact, he was one of their best, constantly trying to prove something. He only ever softened around Charivari 9, and everyone knew why, though.

Perhaps, Charivari 17 muttered, he was bad luck for the rest of them. At which point Charivari 8 would kick him in the shins.


	13. Charivari 14 and 15

Charivari 14 and 15

They really were a pair of professionals, the rest of the charivari knew, who had apparently wandered into Kooza's crazy world only by accident and were perfectly willing to help the rest of them out as catchers, providing they could also help provide some antidote to the occasional insanity the charivari could work themselves up to. The Trickster had apparently decided that enough was enough and he needed to start reintroducing at least a bit of orderliness and calmness back into their act.

Charivari 5 seemed a bit ambivalent at first about the eerie calm that 14 and 15 spread around, being used to his own method of shouting at people to get them to calm down, but when he realized that the two of them were more interested in passive reordering than the shouting method, he relaxed and went back to his usual role of telling people what they should be doing instead of what they were actually doing.


	14. Charivari 16

Charivari 16

Charivari 16 seemed almost like Charivari 1's younger brother, coaching and providing support and a pyramid base for anyone who needed either one. The difference was that he was a flyer, not a pusher, and he could be excused for having a bit of an ego about the fact. He was always extremely ready to take the audience's applause, and they were always rewarded by his proud, wide grin. The day when that grin was missing would be the day when Kooza would start to come apart.


	15. Charivari 17

Charivari 17:

17 was one of the youngest charivari, teenager-age, lively and ready to learn, his short-cropped blond hair always visible in the practice room. Charivari 13 seemed to have some kind of personal grudge against his younger counterpart, and 17 had given up trying to make friends with him. He rose to the challenge readily now, and they had an intense competition going on, to the point where Charivari 5 had to take the two of them aside occasionally and give them a lecture on how teamwork and safety was more important than having constant competitions and catfights with each other.


	16. Charivari 18

Charivari 18

Everyone liked 18. You couldn't help it. He was just about the funniest person ever - the jokester of the troupe, he could have played as backup to the clowns if he hadn't had a better sense of humor than they did. He was the one they all sat around in the evenings, not just his fellow troupe members but everyone in the realm, and listened to as he told them stories and made them all roll around on the ground laughing. He just had a magnetic personality, onstage as well as backstage. The Trickster would have killed him when he suggested to the Innocent, with a perfectly straight face, that Innocent take a turn on the teeterboard, except that the boy took it all in stride and the audience found it too amusing for Trickster to really mind.


	17. Charivari 19

Charivari 19

The final and youngest member of their group, 19 was the baby of the charivari family, forming the cap on their pyramid, so to speak. He actually did look younger than the rest of them, with his innocent baby face, not that many of the non-charivari ever noticed. They all loved him, and ignored him when he protested that just because he had been the last to be created it didn't mean that they should treat him like he was any more fragile than any other member of their troupe.


End file.
